Uber has some big news.
The ride-hailing company recently revealed its prototype for an electric flying taxi ahead of its 2018 Uber Elevate Summit in Los Angeles.
The company intends to start tests for the air transportation service, named uberAIR, in 2020 in Los Angeles; Dallas–Fort Worth, Texas; and Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE).
By 2028, Uber hopes to launch the service, which would transport passengers between rooftop landing pads that the company refers to as “sky ports.” The sky ports would be able to see 200 takeoffs and landings each hour, officials reported.
“We think cities are going to go vertical in terms of transportation and we want to make that a reality,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told CBS News.
The electric vertical (EV) takeoff and landing (eVTOL) prototype unveiled last Tuesday resembles a helicopter with five propellers distributed around the aircraft.
Four of the propellers are dedicated to takeoffs and landings and also have two rotors placed on top of each other. The other propeller allows the eVTOL to move forward.
In a press release, Uber said the number and placement of the rotors would make the eVTOLs safer and quieter than traditional helicopters.
The aircraft will also have a cruising speed of between 150 miles per hour (mph.) and 200 mph., a range of 60 miles per charge. And it’ll have the ability to recharge in around five minutes during peak traffic hours. Each eVTOL will be able to carry up to four passengers.
Although the flying taxi aircraft will feature human pilots at first, Uber hopes to eventually make them autonomous.
And unlike with traditional helicopters, Uber plans to make its aircraft service “affordable for normal people,” said Khosrowshahi. “One of the key tenets of this technology is for us to have four riders in each vehicle. So, essentially, the cost per ride goes down.”
Uber is partnering with NASA to develop a traffic control system that it would use to coordinate the service.
The uberAIR team is led by Mark Moore. He’s Uber’s director of aviation engineering and spent 30 years at NASA where he pioneered electric propulsion machines.
As nonsensical as it may seem, flying cars are on the brink of takeoff. Looking at the combination of new lightweight materials, batteries that can store more energy and cost less, and distributed electric propulsion, experts say an EV that can carry several people around a city is entirely possible.
Uber faces some serious competition from other companies that are working to launch flying taxi services. This includes Airbus, Boeing, and Kittyhawk, the latter of which is backed by Google founder and current Alphabet CEO, Larry Page.
To shore up its aerospace know-how, Uber is working with respected companies, like helicopter manufacturer Bell Helicopter, plane builder Embraer, and Aurora Flight Sciences, which is part of Boeing, to design a new class of flying vehicles that it could eventually integrate into a network.
“Our partners are very capable of designing, certifying, and building conventional aircraft, so what we’re doing is focusing on what’s really different,” said Moore.
In particular, that means electric propulsion.
It allows for multiple short trips, a fast turnaround time, and minimal noise.
No existing planes or helicopters can boast that full range of skills.
Each company is working on that now. But Uber hopes to unify all the efforts with its concept so it can get the aircraft it needs. Anything too different would require different landing or charging infrastructure or would make it completely incompatible with the network.
“Urban air mobility could revolutionize the way people and cargo move in our cities and fundamentally change our lifestyle much like smartphones have,” NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate associate administrator Jaiwon Shin said in a statement.
The plan is for flying taxis to eventually operate autonomously over dense areas. And this could be extremely dangerous if something goes wrong.
But Uber is well-versed in the risks associated with developing new technologies. It paused public tests of its self-driving cars after an Uber SUV in autonomous mode struck and killed a pedestrian in Arizona back in March.
Uber’s timeline calls for there to be commercial uberAIR flights within a few years.
Making that happen all depends on getting everybody on the same page and into the air — together.
That’s all for now.
Until next time,
John Peterson
Pro Trader Today